I want ye aw tae coorie in thegither an be pairt o a Scots commonweel here on Bella Caledonia. Matthew Fitt, Janet Paisley an me want a wheen o ye that are skeely in Scots an fowk that’s never scrievit ocht in the leid, tae gie it a try. It can be quite a leiberatin experience, howkin fae a gowden linguistic seam at’s bidit unwrocht for years, but is a gleg pairt o yer consciousness. Ye micht for ensample be ane o the hunners o thoosans o fowk wi a guid Scots tongue in yer heid, but are unawaur ye hae ane! For Scots is that sib tae English, that monie fowk hae it an dinnae realise it.

Ane o ma favourite scenes fae French Leiterature is whan the eejit Bourgeois Gentilhomme in Molières play is gien a language lesson an gets learit the difference atween poetry an prose: The follaein dialogue ensues:

Luik forrit tae hearin fae ye, an haein a glisk at yer contributions in the neist twa three months. As wi Gaelic an aw the lesser yaised leids o the warld, Scots maun be yaised ilkie day as a raucle spoken an scrievit leid. Tak tent or it’s tint.

Haud forrit!

*Cuid hae been ony airt wi eneuch syllables whaur Scots haes been in the past, an there’s gey few places it haesnae been in the past. I walit this toun a cause o ma 3 pairt series The Scots in Roushia, tae be braidcast on Radio Scotland an stertin Decemmer 22 at 13.32. Near Vladivostok is the toun o Shkotovo an on thon coast is the Shkot Peninsula – namit efter a carle cried Scott that wes oot that wey lang syne – the faimily is mentioned in the Diary o Patrick Gordon at the enn o the seiventeenth centurie. In the 19th centurie there’s anither story o a Scots traiveller gaein intil an orthodox kirk in a remote airt o Siberia an bein a wee bit feart whan a muckle man mountain o a priest wi a lang reid beard breenges toward him spairgin caller Holy Watter. Seein his alairm the priest tells him no tae fash himsel…. “It’s jist a puckle watter an’ll dae ye nae hairm!”

“Ultimately, it will also demand changes in you my brither an sister Scots! Oral retentiveness leads to strange and unhealthy complexes and fixations. Go on, break every grammatical rule in your mental straight-jacket and sing out “A’m urnae like that – for gin I’m no pairt o the solution, I’m pairt o the problem”. Liberating, is’nt it? All you middle aged and now middle class folk who once were patted on the heid by teachers and mammies as you divested yourself of your local dialect in order to get on in life, and now find it difficult and artificial to go back – regress now! regain your lost heritage! – knit thy divided self back thegither again. Efter a while, ye’ll no notice the jeyn.

Mammies that checked their weans wi thon war cry in appalling English “Talk proper!” Stop it. As far as the bairns gettin on is concerned, the future is Scottish. Speakers of Received Pronunciation – dinnae be feart, there will aye be a wee totie establishment for ye ti belang tae gin ye finnd it necessair. But fredome is a nobill thing, cut your crystall vowels first with safe words like kenspeckle and clanjamfry before walking on the wild side with swally, chib, gadgie and likesae!

This inclusiveness will also need to extend to the highly effective Gaelic lobby. Aince upon a time, we were aw suppressed minorities thegither and supported ane anither, but since you climbed a bittie higher, I fear yer leaders hae kicked the ladder awa. When they speak of Scotland as a bi-lingual country, they mean Gaelic and English an deil tak the hindmaist – Scots bein by far the hindmaist in the linguistic pecking order. Jeyn the process of liberation, o Gaels! All the estimated 1.5 million Scots speakers seek is parity with you 60,000 Gaelic speakers. Jeyn us, all you have to lose is your monopoly of ethnic Scottishness in our media, and a few suits!

And to you, the vast majority of Scots who still have a Scots tongue in their heid, thank you for keeping the faith and retaining the tongue as a cherished living entity for future generations. Keep it, extend it and teach it to those linguistic less fortunates. Aye mind, though – tak tent or it’s tint. Over two centuries ago, Burns was advised not to write in Scots, as it was a dying tongue which no one would understand within a generation or two. Yet here we are, still speaking, writing, singing and celebrating in this our ain raucle mither tongue. Gin we’re ocht ava as a fowk, we’ll still be daein the same come the twenty saicond century! For Scots is a mirror of Scotland’s soul. That is why it, and the values it expresses, will endure for aye…an it is comin yet for a that…

For we hae faith in Scotland’s hidden poo’ers
The present’s theirs, but a’ the past and future’s oors.

Alex Buchan
1 year ago

I'm not going to try to write this in Doric (I would hope someday I could). But I wanted to say that this initiative couldn't come soon enough. In my lifetime I've seen a massive decline in Doric in the North East. Having lived all over I'm now living now in Aberdeen and I notice that it is only those over 70 feel comfortable speaking Doric in public. In Peterhead, where I come from, it's slightly different because many of my relatives of all ages in Peterhead will text in the modern idiom of Doric. Probably the majority of those over thirty in Aberdeen can still speak it, but I'd be surmised if they're using it at home, so their kids have lost it. It's reassuring to read that people said it was dying out in Burns day (though I suspect those giving Burns advice would have been from a very small section of society). So I can't help thinking that it's almost on life support up here in the North East.

William Davidson
1 year ago

I hope you get lots of good articles, though one of the barriers might be that, while lots of people were brought up speaking Scots very few, if any, have any experience of writing in it. I was brought up in a rural valley in Co Antrim in N. Ireland where the vast majority of the population would have spoken broad Scots, essentially the dialect of South-West Scotland, though influenced in syntax by Irish and with some Irish loan words. It was liberating and exhilarating for me to write in my native dialect, but at the same time often difficult to replicate the sounds with the right spelling (if there is a right spelling).
Interesting to read Billy's use of the Ayrshire phrase, "ye cannae dae ocht, gin ye've nocht tae dae ocht wi." In North Antrim a similar phrase was legendarily used in exasperation by an ill-equipped farm labourer when he was told off by his employer for not working hard enough, i.e. "hoo can ah dae ocht whun ye hinnae gien mae ocht tae dae ocht wi." An if ye cannae unnerstan that ye'll juist hae tae get oot a guid Scots dictionary.
It would be a great shame if the remnants of Scots were entirely lost on this side of the Irish sea and an even greater shame if that were to happen in Scotland itself. As an Irish person, living within sight of the Scottish coast, it has an emotional and expressive power, which can never be replicated by Standard English.

Billy Kay
1 year ago

Muckle thenks for aw the braw comments sae faur. Keep the faith wi the leid - the maist astonishin thing aboot Scots isnae that it's eroded, but that it tholes an endures at aw, conseiderin aw the pressure against it. Ye can see here it's still in a wheen o fowk's herts.

Kevin Brown
1 year ago

A braw article this, Billy, beautifully scrieven and a’. I have already shared it as far and wide as I am able. This is a brilliant initiative by yourself and Bella Caledonia, and you can rest assured that I will be attentively puzzling through each of the articles published in the Scots Stream. Today already, courtesy of your article, I have added a single Scots word to my wee vocabulary: 'scrieven'. ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’ — submitted by a diaspora Scot (by adoption) in China.

Fay Kennedy.
1 year ago

What a great article. Brought tears tae ma eyes doon here in the antipodes Australia. I would love to have a go but don't know where to start. Thanks so much Billy Kay from a wee Glesca soul whose sensibility is always in the land oh ma ancestors those I remember and those ah can only imagine.

James Dow OZ calling
1 year ago

Don
1 year ago

James I have lived here in Australia since 1964, and I still have a Glasgow accent. Will never lose it, don't want to lose it either. I love these writings, however have a slight problem, ah canny read it aw.

Jim Aitken
1 year ago

I iwiz try tae spik in ma ain tounge tho a dinnae iwiz ken hobo tae spell it? I sing Bothy ballads , perform Scots poetry an including Burns an a handle o Doric poets , dinnae unnerstaun some o the words but ye get the idea as ye gang oan . Yer richt aboot the Gaelic , we never here Scots on TV except at the Burns season , an even then I think it is grudged , like listenin tae Scots Language Radio on Facebook
Hid er gaun

Alf Baird
1 year ago

John Craig
1 year ago

I'd go with you on that Alf. It was a good read from down memory lane, even for someone from the Glasgow area. Ultimately though, the biggest divisors in life and cause of so much angst, are language and religion. There are certain attractive aspects to us all having a crack at Esperanto.

Louise
1 year ago

Hullo Billy and aw the folks posting. Ahm living 'erseas the noo bit lang fur ma hame ev'ryday. Ah've been playing aboot wi' writing a Scots story fur wee weans. Ah think its nearly finished and ah'll be sending it awa' tae see if any publishers like it. If ah hear any guid news ah'll let ye aw ken. Ah huv twa wee lassies and need them to keep their accents while wur no' at hame so ah practise wi' them, sing tae them and remind them that they are proud Scots weans. It's too important for aw oor weans tae forget that the vanacular and the cultyur are what makes us wha we ur.

IAIN RODGERS
1 year ago

Ah'm as big a fan o "Oor Wullie" as a'body, but ye ken whit...

I found it easier to read the bit by Mollière than the rest of that pish. There's a reason why we Standardised English - it makes it easier - everyone can understand everyone else. Do you want to go back to the days when Shakespeare used to spell his name 17 different ways?

IAIN RODGERS
1 year ago

By "we" I meant all those of us who speak English. This is the most geographically widespread language in the world and is internationally recognised as the most convenient language for business. Companies such as Seimens use it as the official language for all projects. I myself have worked on projects (at ABN AMRO Bank) where English was the official project language. I can assure you that it would not have been considered helpful if I had spoken or written like "Oor Wullie" when there were Russsians, Dutch, Nigerians, Swiss etc trying to understand how to solve problems.

At present there are believed to be 2 billion people who speak, or are learning, English. China is expected to become the country with the largest number of English speakers.

So it's a particularly stupid idea to split Scotland off from the rest of the world using an invented "language".

Alf Baird
1 year ago

You miss the point and completely exagerate the supposed inconvenience. Many nations use English as their official administrative language, however these nations also ensure, usually through their constitution, that national language(s) is taught, enabling all people to be bi-lingual, or better (e.g. Singapore, where any one of Malay, Mandarin and Tamil is required to be taught, as well as English). In such countries people have become quite used to speaking administrative English at work, and revert to their 'national' language at home and in other informal or formal settings as appropriate. In the international shipping business I worked in, I found my 'Scots' actually helped me to better understand Dutch and Norwegian colleagues.

Colonialists may try to entirely suppress or oppress indigenous language, as has been the case in Scotland, which is clearly discriminatory, but any self-respecting nation will always seek to protect its languages, which live on regardless or despite official diktat - Scots being a fine example. Scotland should do likewise, and we are already ahead of the game with Gaelic but we need to follow on smartly with the more dominant Scots language, which most of us speak but do not know how to write as well as we should, yet that comes quite easily to native speakers.

IAIN RODGERS
1 year ago

So we're not a colony. We agreed to form a Union. We also voted in favour of that Union recently. The laws we have in common are by agreement. Nothing is imposed. The law we apply to our people are laws that we are involved in the creation of.

Anyway, we have gone off topic a bit.

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Billy Kay
1 year ago

If you read Scots The Mither Tongue, what I propose is bi-lingualism in Scots and English or English and Gaelic.....being bi-lingual means it is a lot easier to become multi-lingual. Apart from Scots, I've got English, French, German, Portuguese, some Russian and a totie bit of Gaelic. All of them came comparatively easily to me because I learned that I had to be bi-lingual from a very early age. To describe the linguistic tradition of Dunbar, Burns and MacDiarmid as "pish" and "Oor Wullie" esque reveals a conflicted identity. I am delighted that I can communicate in a world language like English, but that I have access to the cultural wealth of my national language Scots.

IAIN RODGERS
1 year ago

I don't see the point in being bilingual in Scots and English because one is just a dialect of the other. It was only in the Highlands that Gaelic was spoken. It was only in the borders that Scots started to separate away from English for a time, before becoming more standardised again. These attempts to make it into a separate language are artificial.

For what it's worth I also don't agree that Scotland was ever colonised.

Gordon McShean
1 year ago

As a laddie more than 70 years ago I remember my family leaving Glasgow to spend regular summers with other family folks visiting from Stirling, Aberdeen and Edinburgh (and some from England!) at the family croft in Orkney. One of my great delights - well remembered - lay in hearing the differing vernaculars used by our children as they tried to adjust. I still remember my wee cousin Marie (from Birmingham!) commenting to a Stromness relative as we walked behind the kai: "Och, ye've stood in shite," and being seriously reprimanded, "It's no shite - it's sharn!" Of course "wee" Marie was described as "peedie" - except when others would insist, "No, she's peerie!" I would later be advised that the "peerie" form came from the French influence on the islands: their word for small being "petite!"

I would subsequently spend some years in Europe, the US and finally NZ, being constantly amazed at the varied verbal variations that that have developed in English (and Scots, Lallans, etc.). It is my contention that a standard phonetic spelling system should be developed, not only to allow better comprehension, but also to make it possible for us to trace meanings as the expressions naturally develop. We lose much when some forms are perceived to be inconsistent and other forms are designated as being proper and traditional. All human expression deserves to be honoured (especially expressions learned in youth!).

Michael
1 year ago

John Craig
1 year ago

Udd was a man of Norse origin who in days of yore ventured up the Clyde estuary and eventually settled in an area near Dalmarnock in Glasgow. His little settlement was called Udston, still visible on maps today. Later, his offspring would venture further upstream, past what is now Greyfriars Abbey and onto the last readily navigable part of the Clyde for small craft. Udd's sons settled in this area and it became known as Uddingston (Township of the sons of Udd).
And Uddingston it was for most of it's life, immersed in agriculture, woolen mills, caramel wafer production and finally coal mining; and it was with the arrival of coal mining that there was a notable change.
While those involved in everything other than coal mining still referred to the village as Uddingston, the coal miners referred to the village as "Aidisin". It was a simple fact of life that most of these men went down the mines from the age of fourteen if not earlier. With their lack of education came what may be one of the causes of much of the divergence we see in language today.
It's worth remembering that at one time Latin was the language of the ruling classes and clerics. What we have in formal English today is a refining of communication from a very broad linguistic palette used by the relatively un-educated; quite a bit of it Scots no doubt. Personally, I would prefer to live in Uddingston, not Aidisin, Milngavie, not Mulgai, Wishaw not Wishi or any other place where we were forward looking.

Jamshid
12 months ago

This is a veiled attack on Gaelic. Bilingual is not kicking any ladder away as the English dialects in Scotland function as local forms of English again today, just as they did in the fourteenth century.

Jamshid
12 months ago

He tholed supporting the nazis and hopefully would have had less of a problem with a statement on Scots dialects than he had in rolling with fascsm Its up to Scots language campaigners to recreate a separation between English and Scots, as at present, the million and a half speakers of it speak their language as a form of English. Its almost as if they dont want to call English by that name.

Billy Kay
12 months ago

The old chestnut of Scottish nationalist supporting fascists. In the early '30's fascism did not have the meaning it has now - there are photos of Scots Italian families enjoying a day out at "Fascist picnics" in Stirling. Obviously it all changed as the war approached.

Would you not be more comfortable in the comments section of The Scotsman?

Jamshid
12 months ago

Jamshid
12 months ago

Jamshid
12 months ago

There is no standard way of writing Scots today. This means that in effect, the default shared variety has to be Scottish English or just English. Northumbrian dialects across the North of England dont share a derivaton from Modern English either as is the case too for East Anglian, Midland and West Country dialects and as dialects, they all have equal value as spoken forms of English or "Anglic" and as language varieties in general. The queston occurs, If Scots doesnt have a written form shared between all the dialects, doesnt this mean that today, in effect, Scots is back to what it was in the thirteenth century, ie a group of dialects of English spoken in Scotland that shared more in common with local forms of English in the North of England than they do with Standard English as spoken in the Home Counties etc.

Billy Kay
12 months ago

Fact: Scots is a language recognised by the Scottish, British and European parliaments. It is an integral part of a great national literary tradition. 1.6 million Scots identify themselves with it. It was the first language I learned at my mother's knee, before learning English, French, German, Russian and Portuguese.

You are welcome to your world picture, but it is so alien from mine that I see little reason to continued communicating with you in this forum. Fareweel.

If you would like to educate yourself on the history of Scots, please read Scots The Mither Tongue.

Jamshid
12 months ago

Jamshid
12 months ago

"In 2010 the Canadian academic Susan Wilson unearthed some correspondence in the National Library of Scotland between MacDiarmid and Sorley McLean, his friend, fellow poet and fellow radical political thinker. In these letters, as late as 1941, it is revealed that MacDiarmid (real name Christopher Murray Grieve) regarded Hitler and the Nazis as potentially more benign rulers than the British government in Westminster."